Gospel Truth

Israel is, per reports in multiple international news outlets, using a secretive artificial intelligence tool to identify targets — and their accompanying collateral damage — for assassination amid its ongoing war with Hamas that has all but leveled Northern Gaza.

As The Guardian and the Israeli-Palestinian magazine +972 report, military officials have confirmed on condition of anonymity the existence of a program known as "Habsora," translated to "The Gospel" in English — and not to be confused with the Hebrew term "Hasbara," which roughly translates to "propaganda" — that's said to comprise a "factory"-esque production line of people slated for state slaughter.

The software, which the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) briefly announced in early November, is supposed to generate intelligence on "precise attacks on infrastructure associated with Hamas while inflicting great damage to the enemy and minimal harm to non-combatants."

Interviews with in-the-known sources, however, suggest exactly the opposite: that the widespread collateral damage, in the form of thousands and thousands of civilian deaths that have led to a humanitarian crisis and a global outcry, isn't just known to IDF intelligence units, but is also an intentional tactic.

Acceptable Losses

According to sources who spoke to +972 on condition of anonymity, the heightened bombing of non-military "power targets" — private residences, public buildings, important pieces of infrastructure, and high-rise blocks — is intended to "create a shock" in Palestinian civil society and ultimately "lead civilians to put pressure on Hamas."

Israel has also allegedly used its tech and other intelligence-gathering capabilities under the umbrella of its so-called "target division" to estimate how many civilians would be killed in potential attacks. Those numbers, +972's sources say, are calculated and relayed to the military in advance.

"Nothing happens by accident," one of the magazine's sources explained. "When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target."

Although it's unclear which technologies are used to generate the IDF's target database, it seems pretty clear that "The Gospel" plays a role in the Israeli military's new broad blanket strategy, which one ex-target division official referred to as part of the military's "mass assassination factory" where the "emphasis is on quantity and not on quality."

"We work quickly and there is no time to delve deep into the target," another ex-target division source told +972. "The view is that we are judged according to how many targets we manage to generate."

"We prepare the targets automatically and work according to a checklist," that ex-intelligence official said. "It really is like a factory."

Ex-Israeli Security Official Says Hamas May Think It Can Survive New Offensive.

Hamas may believe it has a chance to survive if the pressure builds on Israel to halt its renewed offensive in southern Gaza before the militant group is defeated, said Eran Etzion, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. American officials say that international pressure could force Israel to stop its operation by early next year, especially if civilian casualties continue at high levels--a timeline that Israel has not accepted.